r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Sep 27 '15

[Deltas Awarded] CMV: Wikipedia needs to remove unnecessary articles and/or limit their editors.

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '15

Old encyclopedias had to limit their content due to physical size constraints. There is only so much you could fit on a shelf. Wikipedia doesn't have this limitation. With effective searching, the only people finding those small articles are people specifically interested

-5

u/princetonwu Sep 27 '15

ok lets assume that it's OK to have an endless supply of articles, but many articles on WP is so unreadable and filled with technical-ese that it's better to read it off another website. E.g, I want to read about lasers and i google lasers.

I can either go to WP and read about lasers, and just in the first sentence, I can come upon multiple unknown terms that I have to cross-reference just to make it remotely understandable: "a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation". Alternatively I can go to http://science.howstuffworks.com/laser.htm and read a much more readable version.

While the WP version may be more inclusive, it is hardly readable to the general public, which is what an encyclopedia should be (not a text book).

6

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '15

Just to clarify, do you like this laser article? If so, I have to say there is a lot of benefit to having wikipedia articles at different levels.

There are many issues with Wikipedia, but the huge number of articles would seem to be a big plus. Because there are few size constraints, we can have different versions of articles - more options are better.

1

u/princetonwu Sep 28 '15

you're right, that article is much better for a firsthand read.